Online advertising is a rapidly growing segment of electronic commerce (e-commerce). Online advertising is the delivery of promotional marketing messages to consumers over the Internet. Examples of online advertising may include email marketing, search engine marketing, social media marketing, many types of display advertising, and mobile advertising. Advertisers may invest in an advertising campaign, which may include delivery of advertisements to users over different types of devices. For example, an advertising campaign may involve emailing advertisements, publishing advertisements on websites, publishing advertisements on social media, and the like. The different modes of delivery of the advertisements may be referred to as channels. Thus, if a user receives an email on their mobile device and also sees the advertisement on a webpage using a web browser on a laptop, then the user has been reached over different channels.
Accordingly, users may utilize multiple devices before executing a conversion event, such as a purchase of a product. However, the use of multiple devices may cause difficulties in crediting a specific advertisement exposed or delivered to a user with a conversion event, which may include, but is not limited to, visiting product detail pages, visiting the read all reviews page for a product, adding a product to a wish list, adding a product to a shopping cart, subscribing to a product, and/or purchasing a product. For example, a user may first be exposed to a particular ad through a promotional email received on a smartphone. The user may later use a web browser on their laptop to visit a webpage for the product of the ad and ultimately purchase the product. However, because the initial ad exposure was through the email, it may be difficult to credit the advertisement in the email with the conversion event of purchasing the product of the ad. The inability to credit advertisements across different devices may result in inaccurate accounting for an ad campaign and an incorrect estimate of the effectiveness of an advertisement. For example, some advertisements may not be credited with any conversion events, despite users purchasing the product as a result of viewing the advertisement on a different device. Similarly, some advertisements may receive duplicative credits even though the product purchase was a result of viewing a different advertisement.